- So I've been using this
really cool, pretty looking sexy mechanical wireless
keyboard for the last few months and I've had literally hundreds of comments from people being like, "Bro, what keyboard are you using? I want one." So, today, I'm finally
revealing the mystery. This is a comprehensive
review of the IQUNIX F96. Hey, friends, welcome back to the channel. If you're new here, my name is Ali, I'm a doctor working in the U.K. And on this channel we
explore the strategies and tools to help us
live healthier, happier, more productive lives. Now, the keyboard is one
of the most important tools in our productivity arsenal
and if you're anything like me, i.e. a massive
nerd, you probably spend more time interacting with your keyboard than you do with your friends and family. So, it's kind of a big deal
that we get the right keyboard because it's really
important for our physical, mental, spiritual and emotional health. I've been using this IQUNIX
F96 wireless mechanical keyboard for the last few months. They sent it to me for review purposes and I liked it so much
that I emailed them, being like, hey, you know,
can we do some kind of deal, arrangement thing here? So, if you click the link
in the video description you can get a 5% discount on their website and I'll get a bit of a kickback as well. So if you want to spend a load of money on a fancy-ass, wireless
mechanical keyboard, this is one option out of many. It's the one that I've
been using personally. Anyway, in this video I'm gonna talk about these various things and, as usual, we'll start with upfront conclusion to save you time if that's
all you want to hear. And then we've got time
stamps in the video description and in the pinned comments, you can skip around the
video if you feel like it. So, upfront conclusion, I love this thing. It sounds really good. (keys clicking) It looks really pretty. I've had hundreds of comments
of people being like, oh, that keyboard looks amazing. Where did you get it? Like, what is it? So, I think it just adds
such a nice, colorful splash of personality vibe to my otherwise somewhat sterile desk set up. And, actually, I've also
got the Apple Magic keyboard which I still sometimes use if I want to, if I want to Zoom call or
something, and I don't, I want to not make noise
or if my housemate Molly is asleep from a night
shift, then I will kind of, be a bit considerate and
not do this kind of -- (keys clicking) But, like, the sound is
just, like, the thing that sells it for me. It just makes an absolute joy to type on. And, yeah, it's expensive. Check it out. Link in the video description. 5% discount, blah, blah, blah. But I think it's worth it, personally, because a keyboard is, like, the one thing that we interact, like, I
interact with my keyboard more than I interact with my mouse, because obviously,
because I'm not a clicker, because, you know, only
noobs are clickers, as they say. So, I just use the keyboard for everything and so if it's a nice and
that's, like, good for me, so, yeah, I love it. That was my upfront conclusion
for whatever that's worth. Let's now talk about the design. Now, so, this is, it's
a full size keyboard. We've got the numpad. We've got, I've gone for the
coral, the coral version. Which is sort of this
blue with this orange, kind of, fluorescent
orange type pink thing. And, yeah, as you can
see, there's a slight gray to the color of the keys, except the keys that are blue have the
accent color as, like, the text color and it's kind
of the other way around. I just think that it's a very,
kind of, classy aesthetic. And, before, I was all about, you know, let's have, like, a sterile, minimalistic Apple style keyboard. But then when I started using this thing and started thinking,
like, it's just looks really cool on everything, like, you know, have a look at the overhead shot. I like, these days on my
thumbnails I just have the keyboard off to the side. I would have the product in the middle. And look at that, that
scene just looks really cool because we've got this colorful keyboard adding personality. Whereas when we don't
have it, it would just be a bit sterile. So, honestly, like, the
looks really sell it for me. So, I just love the design of this thing. In terms of weight, it's quite bulky. Like -- (bang) Like, it feels really, really beefy. And when I'm typing,
like, it never, sort of, moves around. Like -- (keys clicking) It's just, it never moves. It's a very, kind of, solid product. And so, yeah, I just love
everything about the design. We've got this USB-C charging
port thingy at the back. We've got these feet at the bottom. And we've got, kind of, the brand name, F96 IQUNIX, and it's got these, kind of, feet that stick out from the bottom that sort of rest it at this
nice, slightly elevated angle. Which just makes it really
comfortable to type on for extended periods of time. Let's talk about the sound now. Now, like, full disclosure,
I know absolutely nothing about mechanical keyboards
so I didn't really know anything about the
cherry red, cherry blue, versus brown color switches. This is the cherry red version. Because I thought cherry
red, or cherry pink, whatever it's called, I
thought that sounded cool. And here is what it sounds like. In fact, you know what, I'm
just going to do a typing test on ten fast fingers. So let's record my screen. All right, let's go for it. (keys clicking) 150 words per minute, not too bad. It's not my best. Like, I think objectively, my typing speed is very slightly slower
on this than it is on, for example, the Apple Magic keyboard or my iPad Pro Magic keyboard. Just because I think that
the fact that this has more key travel and you have to, kind of, press it a little bit
harder means that you are shaving, at least I am, I'm
shaving a few words per minute off my typing speed. Like, on the iPad and Magic
keyboard, the first time I did the typing test I
got 154 words per minute. But, still, 150 words per minute, don't think anyone's
going to say no to that. I'll be doing a video
later on where I talk about tips for how to type fast and like an absolute
productivity grease monkey. But that should hopefully
give you an idea of -- (keys clicking) what this sounds like. It's really annoying over Zoom calls, it's really annoying for
other people in the house, but right now it's locked down. I'm on my own. It's great. I fricking love the sound of this thing. Okay, next, let's talk about the lights. And to really show you
the lights, I'm gonna turn off the lights. And I'm gonna drawn the curtains. And so hopefully
everything's kinda gone dark. But, basically, this has some
really cool RGB color options. You don't have to go for the
RGB, kind of, lighting version. It's a bit more expensive if you do. But I've gone for it,
because it's kind of cool. So, let's turn the backlight on. And now, we're gonna get the manual out because this, this is the manual. It tells you, sort of, what, essentially, what key combinations
you have to press to get the different, different
lighting settings. So I just always have that to hand. So, let's see. (keys clicking) So this is mode number one. If I type. (keys clicking) So you see the lighting, it sort of comes out and, from whatever key that you type on. So that's kind of cool. We can also change the,
the color of the keys. So we can make it yellow. Green. Blue. Purple. Pink. We've got a multi-colored one as well. So, yeah, whatever sort or color you want for your set up, let's
go with blue for now. Let's see, what else have we got? FN, nope, FN shift to change the mode. Hello. Okay so this is an entirely back lit mode. So that's another thing that we can do, if you are inclined to be this tacky when it comes to keyboards. What's the next one? Oh, hello. Look at that. Now it's flashing, is it,
and if I press something? Now we've got the rainbow effect going all throughout the keyboard. Now we've got this sort of ripple kind of, wavy kind of effect if you're
into that sort of thing. Now we've got this subtle
kind of glowy type effect. Which, again, is not influenced
by the keys that I type. Now we've got this sort of thing. Where the wave kind of, the wave of light, and the wave of depolarization goes across the keyboard and back again. And it's sort of, is it changing color? No, but if I wanted to I could change the color of it. If I want to have it on, I usually have it completely off
because it kind of drains a bit of battery, which
is kind of annoying, but if I were to have it on, this would be how I'd have it on. Typing random stuff. Because now, like, when
you hit the key, it -- (puffs) Sort of lights up from that. And this is just, like,
really fricking cool. This was like a big reason why I got this, you know, I got the RGB
version of this keyboard when they emailed me because I was like, I would love to be able to
have these kind of lights. It's kinda cool at nighttime. I'll be honest, I don't
usually have them on because they do drain battery. Let's talk about the feel of the keys now. So -- (keys clicking) It's sort of hard to say. So, if I compare it
against the Magic keyboard. Which is, I suppose, the
other keyboard that I use. These -- (keys clicking) There's very little key travel. And you can hear what this sounds like. (keys clicking) Whereas this -- (keys clicking) There's significantly more key travel and that is, I suppose, sort of, the main thing when it comes to
the feel of the keys. They feel very, like, when you hit a key it, just, like, feels really good. And I apologize that I'm not an official reviewer of mechanical keyboards so I don't know how, I
don't know what terminology you're supposed to use to
describe the feel of keys. But the main thing I would say is that when I need to, for example, plan a video or type out long emails or do anything that involves lots of
typing, this is the keyboard that I go to. I could go to this one,
I could go to my iPad Pro Magic keyboard, I also
have the old Apple keyboard somewhere, but this is
the one that I go to because the feel of the keys just makes me more, encourages me more to write stuff. To type out stuff. And I think that's
valuable because most of the stuff I do on the internet and making money on the
internet revolves around typing a load of stuff. Like planning videos and things. So that is sort of what
they keys feel like. Let's talk about charging now. Annoyingly I can't actually find the cable that comes with this
but it's a USB-C cable. Because this is a USB-C port. It's a braided sort of
nylon-y feeling cable. It feels, like, quality and stuff. The really annoying thing about, you know, this is one of my gripes with it. Is that you can't charge
it with a USB-C data cable. You can only charge it
with a USB-C power cable. So my charger for the
iPad and for the MacBook, it doesn't work on this, annoyingly, you have to use a specific power thingy. And so I've got this
random red one from Amazon. This is like some Amazon basics one. And this one would work to charge it because it's just a, a power cable, and I connect this to the power cord. If I were to connect this to
my laptop it wouldn't work because it's not, it can't be charged over a data connection or
something stupid like that. It's kind of annoying, it took me a while to figure that out, but I
guess it's a small price to pay, and I just kind
of plug this in the mains and then plug it into the
keyboard and then it works. So any USB-C cable will
work for it, it's just, it can't be, it can't be
data that goes through it has to be power only. I'm not really sure why
that is, I'm sure they could have changed it, but
yeah, that's the slightly annoying this about the charging. In terms of battery
life, like, if I have the lights enabled, then I
had to charge it every three or four days. Which is quite annoying. Like, it was actively annoying
to have to charge this every three or four days. So I'd be switching to this. And then I realized, like,
two months into owning this keyboard that I can
just disable the back light and now, like, I disabled
the backlight, like, I don't know, three months ago and I haven't had to charge it since just because it's not run out of battery. So I don't know what the
actual battery life is. But, in, like, three months
I haven't had to charge it. Once I disabled RGB lighting. So, if you're a fan of
these, like, fancy RGB colors then you'll have to charge
it a little bit more often but I'm, I don't usually
have them enabled, therefore I don't charge it very often. Final few things, so I've got the version that does have a numpad. I'm not sure they have a version without, but to be honest, I never
really use the numpad. It's kind of helpful if I'm
typing in a lot of numbers or if I'm doing a lot of data entry. I don't really do that anymore. I've got a team of people
who, kind of, work for me, who can now do data
entry if I need them to. So, honestly I don't really
use the numpad for a lot. But, I don't know, it just
makes it look a bit more beefy having a numpad
than not having a numpad. Then in terms of Windows
and Mac compatibility, so this is control, Windows and alt. So this, kind of, the design
is for Windows keyboards. But, when you have a
Mac, alt becomes command, which makes sense because
that is where command would be, and then the
Windows key becomes alt. So, like, it's super easy
to use as a Mac user, but it is a keyboard that
is designed more for Windows so you won't see a command key. You will see there's a Windows old setup. But if you, like, if you've
got the muscle memory of how to operate a Mac keyboard, you just kind of know you've got command, you've got alt, and then
you've got shift and control. Blah, blah, blah. Like, it works absolutely fine. You don't have an FN key on that side. You have an FN key on this side. So, that's something you
might want to keep in mind. If you need to look down
and see where command is on the Mac then maybe this
keyboard's not for you but if you've got the muscle memory then it's absolutely fine. And, finally, let's talk about the price. Bear in mind, if you click
the link in the video description, or use the
coupon code Ali at check out, you will get a 5% discount,
or whatever that's worth. But, let's look at the pricing. So, the basic wired
version is 199 dollars. If you go wireless, it's 229. 100% if you're spending
$200 on a keyboard, please spend the extra
$30 to get it wireless because it's just so nice
having a wireless keyboard. It's just absolutely sick. I cannot image going
back to a wired keyboard. If you want the backlight,
it's another $20. I mean, I went for it
because they were giving it to me for free, but to be honest, even if I was buying this,
I would have gone for the backlight just because
my old Magic keyboard I was using from the age of
14 up until the age of 25. I went 11 years with a single keyboard and, like, you know, this is spending $250 over an 11 year period,
I mean, like, I really couldn't care less
personally, but, you know, you might have a different preferences. And as I said, I went for the cherry red. I'm not really sure what
cherry brown and cherry blue are supposed to sound like,
but I thought cherry red sounded cool so that was
the one that I went for. So, yes, it's a bit steep. For me, I think the expense is justified. Would I spend $250 on a keyboard? Yes. Would I spend $500 on a keyboard? $500 would be the price point
for me where I would think, okay this had better be a
very compelling keyboard. Whereas $250 I think,
well, you know, my Airpods were $250 and I use my
keyboard ten times more often than I use my Airpods. So, personally, I think it's worth it. But I totally get like you
really do not need to spend $250 on a keyboard,
like, it's not gonna make you any happier in life, it just -- (keys clicking) Makes you feel more like a
badass when you're typing on it and it annoys people that you live with. So that is what I'm going to say on price. So yeah, that's the IQUNIX F96 keyboard. If you wanna buy it,
please do use the link in the video description. You get a 5% discount and
I get some kind of kickback as well, so if you wanna
support my coffee addiction then this is great. If you enjoyed this video
I'm gonna make a video about how I type so
fast and that'll appear over there once I film it. Or if I haven't filmed
it yet, then click here for a playlist about my
favorite apps on how to be more productive on
a Mac, on a computer, or whatever, see you in the next video. Bye bye.
